it started to snow on good friday, but the climax was today: 20cm of fresh snow everywhere. ok, not that i would mourn the fate of the pollen that already caused me heavy allergic coryza, but still…
back to salzburg after a long time, and for the first time on the mönchsberg. the weather was fine for a short time and the sun already low at 3:00 pm which caused fine shadows and a great plasticity in the structures below. my favourite is this jumble of roofs and chimneys, lined up along a curved street with market stalls deep down in the shadow.
the cupolas and towers of the churches of salzburg of course form a nice scenery for themselves, and especially from this high vantage point of the so called “stadtalm” they are arranged almost in layers. aah, and if i only could blog the taste of the beer up there…
the old sycamore tree with its expressive figure and cortex iuxtaposes nicely the oh so mundane ‘parking tickets’ signboard.
lightzone again proved to be a valuable tool to darken the background a little bit and except it from the sharpening algorithms.
the second shot is the shadow of St. Ägidius church here in Bad Reichenhall. i love the sharp silhouette of the branches against the soft shadow of the clocktower.
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after winter came back into our valley for three days and brought some fresh snow, i used some free hours to go back to weissbach canyon to look for water and ice. those layers above covered several square meters of rocks. in the end they stopped my exploring of the canyon as they were impossible to cross, but the made a really good subject for a picture. this one is in fact a combination of four single shots in helicon focus to achieve overall sharpness. some massaging in lightzone helped to guide the eye a bit.
the image to the right was taken at the same spot. the forms of the frozen leaves and the harsh shadows remind me of some long forgotten letters.
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this image is a lecture of seeing for me. our photo group was
visiting a local vernissage and i made use of the occasion to train my
fingers, and eyes so i thought. everything very conventional, some nice
snaps of kids and the artist, but no real picture. we went up to
the balustrade with some more collages on the walls and coming down we
had a view of the already almost empty buffet. our lecturer, a
photographer of dozens of years of experience i have to add, pointed
downwards and asked me what i thought about the scenery – and i was
reluctant. he asked again, and me: still reluctant. just when i walked
down the stairs and had a symmetrical view of the table under me and the
peoples surrounding it like dark pillars i saw the picture. and now seeing
it on my screen i really like it.
now tell me: why was i so slow in the uptake?
after the storm has been ebbing, i dared to go out again without having to fear flying branches or roof tiles. winds were still fierce so I captured the moving leaves.
a second try where the shaking spring snowflakes here. So my new tripod proved to be a stable support for the camera even in such windy situations. the strange thing is that nobody of my friends shares my joy about the tripod. everbody tries to avoid using one whenever possible. but my impression is that some shots i would have never gotten without one, some shots come out a lot sharper, and, the most important thing: it slows me down! i take more time to think and afterwards to chimp and check the composition on the display and i got the feeling that overall it’s sometimes worth the hazzle.
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